Syndicate
by aeternium
Summary: AU in which Padmé gave birth to triplets. If Lial Skywalker lived to the age of three hundred, these would still remain the three most important conversations of her life.


_Naboo, 12 BBY:_

"Are you coming in?"

He doesn't speak, or make any motion to signal that he has even heard her for several moments. It's hard to tell what the dark man's intentions are, if he even is a man at all inside that suit, but something tells her that he means her no harm. He's curious, maybe. That's all right. She is, too.

It's not every day you meet a man in a suit.

Finally he speaks.

"No."

His voice is deep, and a little scary, but she actually sort of likes it. It's rhythmic, and threatens and soothes at the same time, sort of like it's trying to slip into an old habit. She likes him. She _feels_ things from him, like curiosity and sadness and a weird sort of thing like he wants something he used to have and mightjustmight get it back.

"Should I ask Aunt Sola to come outside instead?"

"No, young one. I'm not here to see your aunt. I'm here to see you."

"Really?" she asks. She never gets visitors, and tells him so. He laughs, but she doesn't think it's very funny. Somehow she thinks he doesn't really think so either.

"I expect you don't," he says. "What is your name, child?"

Aunt Sola told her not to tell strangers her real name. It's dangerous, she said. But the man in the suit won't hurt her. Somehow she _knows_ this, in that same way she knows things like Auntie and Grandma and her cousins don't.

A tradeoff, then. That's fair.

"Well, what's _your_ name?" she asks, and what she feels from the man in the suit now is _pride._

_

* * *

_

_Imperial Center, 6 BBY:_

Dad's shouting and the senator's too aware of status to yell back, but she can feel his rage broadcasting all over the place.

"I don't know why they're so angry at each other... it's not like _they're_ the ones getting each other into detention every other day," the other girl says, and suddenly Lial realizes how much she really will miss Leia Organa, because there's no way Dad's going to let her stay in school for much longer.

* * *

_Endor, 3 ABY:_

"You're it, then. You're the missing link."

She can't help it – she snorts.

"If you want to call it that."

"And you've been with him all this time," he presses on.

"Since I was six. He found me. Your Jedi friends didn't do quite so good a job of stuffing me out of the way as they did for you two."

"But don't you see what this means?" he asks urgently.

The clock's ticking, they both know it. The rebel fleet is on the move, and she knows Palpatine's up to something, though she has no idea what. She never does, and even Dad has only a vague idea. That's how it works, the chain of command. Even now that's how it works – Luke (_her brother_) turns himself in, the troopers take him to her. Dad's waiting at the base to take him up to the Death Star, to the Emperor. Finally.

"And what does this mean, exactly?"

"He found you… he _wanted_ to find you, that means there's got to be good in him. Enough to want to find his child, anyways. Look, I don't know what he told you but you have to listen to me. This might be the only chance to help him see the light again. You have to help me."

Oh, Luke. He really has no idea. She tells him as much.

"You don't get it, do you?" she says. It's not a question, not when he's so earnest. He wasn't raised like her, the perfect actor. She continues, "Luke, why do you think Kenobi got off so easily? A hand is nothing, just petty revenge. Dad could have killed him twenty times over if he'd wanted to."

"I don't understand."

An eyeroll. "The first Death Star, Bespin, that business on Shili… you had so many close calls, didn't you ever wonder? What happened to Captain Solo was regrettable, but he needed _something_ to show to Palpatine."

"It broke Leia's heart."

"He's fine," she said dismissively. "We'll recover him on Tatooine once this is all over. Right now we need you. _Dad_ needs you. I've been waiting sixteen years for this and finally… this is really it."

They've been walking all the while and are almost at the base but Luke stops, and gives her a long, searching look. Something pokes in the back of her mind, and she lets it shift into place like with Dad, like with Leia before she understood why. This is right. This really _is_ it.

"Come on," she says. "He's waiting."


End file.
